AUTHOR'S NOTE: the setting and timing of the story is always in the author's note.
Set Pre-SPN Satanpocalypse, Post-Ghost Story, with flashbacks circa Storm Front. This particular tale takes place during (and is written in the same style as) the events of Unfinished Business.
This chapter is set circa Storm Front.
[Fifteen Years Earlier]
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph."
Karrin drew her SIG from under her jacket. The snap of the thumb break was anvil-loud in the hallway – it was silent in the rundown tenement. Tomblike. The air was thick, too hot for this early in the summer, too hot for this late at night.
The scene hadn't been secured yet. Getting caught off-guard in a building like this might spell a death sentence. It had for the two transients living here.
The rookie that had found the scene was still shaking, shell-shocked, out at the ambulance. His senior officer had radioed it in. It was already causing a stir out on the street, but the fire truck and ambulance parked outside weren't going to do these two any good.
It was an middle-aged couple, maybe. Hard to tell. Life had aged them prematurely, maybe drugs – the place had the familiar aroma of recently-cooked meth at the building's main entrance.
In here, though, it smelled of death.
Karrin paused. It was a moment before she could step into the room. Blood pooled on the floor, edges congealing on the dusty carpet, almost black in the light spilling in from the street. It was difficult to find a place to stand.
Carmichael swore softly. The beam of his flashlight settled not on the body but a few feet away from it. Between it and the next one. Pieces of the next one. More blood glittered on the peeling wallpaper, on the ceiling.
Dinner tried to climb back up her throat, but she didn't look away. These weren't people. Not anymore. They were dead and she couldn't help them beyond keeping what had done this to them from hurting anyone else.
"Clear?" Carmichael asked from behind her. She nodded.
They moved into the room, guns down at their sides, flashlight beams sweeping.
It wasn't...normal. Not that murder was ever normal, by any means. There was an obvious reason it had been immediately handed off to her department. The victims had been eaten like roadkill. Opened up like a package. Like a monster had done it. Only there were no such thing as monsters.
Not on paper, anyway.
Her partner sighed. "Some days I really hate our division."
She nodded her silent agreement.
Murphy had been sent to the place good cops go to die. Sometimes in more than just words. Special Investigations was CPD's equivalent of Spooky Mulder in the Basement Office, the department that got all the weird, unsolvable crap that no one else wanted.
It was her own fault. She had pushed it, had asked too many questions about the Astor case – that little girl had not been kidnapped, she had run away and those people had more money than god, and had very clearly bought somebody off, made it look like a crime as to not lose face in front of their old white money friends.
Making mention of this had gotten Karrin demoted-slash-promoted to Special Investigations, to the head of the goddamn department; she was barely twenty-seven, for the love of all that was holy. It was dirty politics, fucking all of it. The brass had wanted the last director gone, thought they had found a disposable replacement.
They didn't expect her to last a month, much less a year.
Every closed case was a big fuck-you in the face of the jerks that had thought they had dumped her at a dead-end.
She waved her partner over to the room's only other exit, a broken window opening onto a fire escape. "Over here."
There were bloody boot prints crossing the room; workboots, quite large, long stride, belonging most likely to a rather tall man, moving fast and bleeding – a trailing drip matched the footprints.
Carmichael studied the prints for a moment. She knew he was thinking along the same lines she was – weird crime scene in the middle of the night, tall guy boot prints...
"Your Mister Man, maybe?"
He never stopped giving her hell for hiring the only professional wizard in the Chicago phone book as a consultant. Even when their department's closed-case rate jumped up by almost eighty percent. Carmichael was contrary by nature. He was a good guy, he had known her dad when her dad was still around, and he always had sound, albeit cranky, advice.
As for Dresden, well. Harry seemed to be under the impression he had his own special wizardly jurisdiction that existed outside the laws of time, space and Cook fucking County.
"Again." Murphy swore under her breath. She nodded toward the door and they moved out the hall, down the dangerously steep, narrow staircase toward the flashing lights outside. "He's going to get himself killed. How hard is it to pick up a damn phone?"
"Don't hold it against him, Kar." Her partner fished a pack of Marlboros out of his jacket, lit up, took a drag as soon as they made it outside. "I think you scare the poor bastard."
She let him finish half the cigarette before she plucked it out of his mouth and ground it out beneath her heel, raising an eyebrow.
Carmichael frowned down at the embers as they blew down the alley.
"I'll radio in for a forensic team. Butters is going to own my soul after this one." Karrin started across the alleyway toward the patrol car. Her Kevlar and shotgun were in the trunk. "Then we'll check out that blood tra—"
A flicker of movement above them caught her eye and she threw an arm out in front of her partner. They both stared upward. There was a shout, a half-dozen shadows flying in different directions, unmistakable gunfire, the whine of a ricochet and muzzle flash against the dark sky. Heavy footfalls rattled on metal grating.
Suddenly a large section of the fire escape broke free and plummeted several stories, sparks flying as it scraped against brick, and landed squarely on top of their Crown Vic with a crash of glass and steel.
A cry of alarm went up from the medics. A half-dozen firefighters rushed toward them.
Carmichael calmly lit another cigarette as Murphy reached for her radio.
to be continued...